Google Identity
These are some thoughts in response to a post by Pavlos on Google+, on Google+. (They are posted here on my blog in order to be consistent with their content! Consider this a trackback. Hmmm, whatever happened to trackback?)
I have three things to say here.
First, whatever Google’s worthy plans may be re other long-term benefits of having well-defined identities in this new space, we should not forget that real names, tied to real addresses, are worth more to a company whose primary business is advertising. Pavlos, I expect you are cognizant of this, but I didn’t see it in your posts yet.
Second, anyone who believes in the value of having an online identity and who then gives a commercial company ownership of their main identity page is taking quite a risk. Google has previously been mostly on the side of light re supporting technologies (such as OpenID) that do this stuff right: which is, to let you define your identity provider somewhere that you control, so you can migrate identity providers if required. (Register a domain name. Delegate everything that speaks canonically about you online - email, blog, profile - via resources accessed under that domain name.) I really hope Google+ makes supporting this approach a priority too.
Lastly, with regards to both to my second point and to Pavlos’ third (re those who require anonymity) - this service is brand new. A lot of the features we are after are allegedly simply on the to-do list. So we should wait and see.
